A Journey of Healing
by CharlotteBlackwood
Summary: Another Remus Smutshot in my series! This is a HAPPY ENDING. RL/KB, post-war, slightly AU. VERY limited M material, but it's there. This was my attempt to be more sweet than lemony. It's like... lemonade! :P Enjoy


**A/N: This is the next of my Remus Smutshots! The last one was Remus/Madam Pince... If you didn't check before, this is Remus/Katie Bell! :D I love the ones with his former students. There are always so many possibilities! I'm trying to take a different tack here than I did with Alicia Spinnet and Daphne and Eloise... Hope you enjoy and check out the rest of the series!**

** -C**

Remus's eyes flickered open and he found himself in a hospital.

That was right, he remembered. He had been hospitalized after the battle at Hogwarts, lucky to be alive. Tonks was dead. He'd told Tonks not to go; she'd promised to stay home and now she was dead - and by some miracle he was still alive.

He knew the miracle was Katie Bell, his former student and Healer-in-Training. There weren't enough Healers to go around what with the war, especially with the numbers needing medical attention after the final battle. The Trainees were getting almost as many patients of their own as the actual Healers. By a paperwork error Remus had ended up in Katie's care, and he was grateful that he had.

There was her beautiful face, he thought, still half-asleep, as she walked through the door of the room Harry and Kingsley had managed to secure for him, considering his condition. She was coming in to check on his condition as she did regularly because someone had to do it and the paperwork error he'd suspected was her doing since he first woke up in the hospital had made him her patient.

"Good afternoon, Remus," she said in a breathy voice that he knew she hadn't had in school. But that had been years ago.

People change.

Though not so long ago, he thought groggily, that she would have changed her whole way of talking on a whim. Maybe it was his ears or something.

"Good afternoon, Katie," he said hoarsely.

Maybe it was his ears after all. He was sure he'd grown hoarser in the hospital than he'd been before, although Katie Bell insisted that he was unchanged. Of course, she also insisted that changing his dressings and doing sponge baths for him was no trouble at all, so she wasn't necessarily entirely honest when it came to his feelings, he decided.

"How are you feeling today, Remus?" she said in her cheery, breathy voice that he was beginning to enjoy the cadences of.

"The same," he said, speaking of his physical condition. That, of course, had only improved, but his pain hadn't lessened yet. Mostly, it was soreness that she said she could treat as soon as the spell damage healed.

His emotional state, though, was an absolute wreck.

He was lonely, forlorn, and Andromeda had only brought Teddy to visit twice in the month and a half that he'd been in the hospital. He wanted his son, but was in no condition to play with him. He wanted his wife, but she was gone because she had that Black impulsive streak a mile wide, just like her dead cousin.

Katie nodded, scribbling a word or two hastily on his chart. Then she took a deep breath, smiling at him.

Katie had a pretty smile, he had decided a few days prior after having seen it about a dozen times. It did more for healing him than any of the spells and balms she had to give him for his physical hurts. He wished he had a picture of her smiling and laughing that he could just look at while he was conscious. He would be better in no time.

But he couldn't ask her for such a picture. It would be inappropriate. And she wasn't about to hand him one, Remus was sure, so they went on like that, him feeling as though he was living on her smiles and visits from his son and existing only in a dazed state between those moments.

Maybe it was a week or so later (he was losing track of counting time in that sterile, magically lit room with the fake windows) when she came in with an extra-bright smile on her face.

"Good morning, Remus," she said in her breathless voice.

So it was morning. Remus made a note of that, as though it mattered somehow.

"Good morning, Katie," he replied hoarsely.

She gripped his chart and said, "Are you feeling better?"

"I'm feeling roughly the same as yesterday," Remus said with a shrug. "The pain's been gone for a while, though. I'm just sluggish and tired at this point."

"Excellent," Katie said, even more breathlessly than usual, if possible. "You're healed, Remus. You can go tonight. I'm going to contact your mother-in-law and Harry and we'll see how they're going to handle your discharge. How does that sound?"

Remus hesitated.

On the one hand, he so badly wanted to get out of the hospital, off the medications that were messing with his sense of time, with his sleep, with his reality, with his ability to handle everything that had happened to him since the beginning of that battle...

On the other hand, there was nothing Remus found himself dreading more than having to finish his emotional healing process away from Katie Bell's radiant, warming smile.

"I don't know," he said honestly.

Her smile faltered and he wanted to hit himself for causing such a thing when he only had so much time left with her beautiful smile.

"What is it, Remus?" she asked softly. "Would you rather be discharged somewhere else? Or are you still having some sort of problem?"

"It's not that," he said quickly, deciding that the truth would be better than worrying her unnecessarily. The worst that could happen would be that she would never see him again for her disgust at him. "It's just that I don't want to miss waking up to your smile all the time. It has truly become the highlight of my day."

He decided that sounded better than telling her that it was his reason for waking up, although that was perhaps a more honest statement.

Katie blinked at him for a moment and he braced his groggy self for her outrage, but it didn't come. Instead, her smile slowly returned and she said, "That's very sweet of you to say, Remus, but you can't stay in the hospital forever. Perhaps we could have lunch when you're feeling better and I can promise to smile the whole time."

Remus could feel his own chapped lips forming a smile at that and he nodded. She tucked his blankets more snuggly around him, even more tenderly than usual, he would have liked to think, before heading back out to presumably contact his soon-to-be caretakers.

The following morning, Harry picked Remus up from the hospital and Remus was taken to Andromeda's house where Harry and Andromeda would look after Remus and Teddy until Remus could handle both tasks.

Remus thought that day would never come, but he slowly grew physically stronger, healthier, in spite of feeling empty and alone inside. The only time he didn't feel like it would be better to have died in his wife's place was when he held Teddy, and then his selfish nature kicked in.

After about a week, Remus was sitting at the table carefully buttering his toast when Harry sat down across from him.

"You're going to have to change," Harry said good-naturedly as he poured a glass of milk for Remus, whose hands were still shaking too much for pouring liquid, especially hot tea. "You've got a lunch date."

Remus frowned.

"Do I?" he said, trying to remember having ever set a lunch date with anyone. He hadn't talked to anyone but Andromeda, Harry, and Teddy since he got home from the hospital. "I don't think I do."

"You've been talking in your sleep," Harry said with a smirk. "I ran into Katie the other day, asked if you two had gotten close, because you kept talking about her in your sleep so I was curious, and she said that you had decided that you'd have lunch when you were up to it. You're up to it, so I set up a lunch date. You're due at the Three Broomsticks at noon. And you're going to wear something else."

Remus looked down at his ragged outfit and frowned.

"I don't have anything else," he admitted sheepishly.

"I know, I picked you up a new outfit today," Harry said casually, as if buying a new outfit for someone was nothing.

For Harry, it was.

And Remus felt panic well up in his chest. He was poor and dangerous and old. And Katie was even younger than Tonks. Starting out this way, starting by talking about her in his sleep and thinking about her smile and going out to lunch with her... It was the sort of way he'd started out with Tonks, and despite his better judgment and by some miracle, he had married her, he'd been blessed with their son.

"Relax, Remus," Harry said with a small grin. "She's very excited about seeing you. You know, she had a crush on you in school. I think most of the girls did. At least, the ones I knew."

"Why?" Remus said, incredulously.

Harry shrugged.

"Maybe it's because you were the youngest professor who wasn't Snape. I don't really know. Hermione says you have 'rugged appeal', whatever that means."

Remus just blinked down at his milk. He didn't know what it meant, either.

But being the youngest professor who washed his hair, that was something Remus could understand being at least marginally attractive. And school girls could be so funny about those things.

Harry got Remus changed, although Remus thought it was a bit of an uphill battle. When Andromeda agreed that Remus was presentable Remus kissed Teddy on the cheek and stepped out, Disapparating with a churning, nervous stomach, which is never the best way to go about Disapparating, but Remus didn't have much in the way of choices.

Harry had all but told him that if he didn't hear about the meeting from Katie, Remus was going to be dragged to another meeting and Harry would sit there, watching the meeting to ensure that it happened whether Remus liked it or not.

So Remus stood there, freshly Apparated at Hogsmeade. He hesitated outside the all-too familiar door of the Three Broomsticks wondering if there could be any way he might make Harry think he'd gone without actually going inside, but Harry would talk to Katie, so Remus didn't have any way to pull off not doing as everyone seemed to want him to do.

With a deep breath he nodded to himself, pushed open the familiar door, and walked in with all the confidence he could muster.

Katie Bell was sitting in the corner, sipping a butterbeer, and looking like an angel, and Remus felt a compulsion the moment he saw her to go over to her table. Suddenly, it was like the very idea of being afraid, of wanting to not meet her, seemed ridiculous. Where else could he rather be than with Katie?

When she looked up and saw him, smiling as he approached, he felt his heart swell, felt some more of his broken heart heal, just as it did every time he saw her beautiful smile.

"Remus," she said sweetly as he sat, her voice just as breathless as he remembered. "Harry said you'd come, but I... Well, I thought you might have decided you didn't want to see me anymore."

"Why?" Remus asked incredulously, realizing only in that moment just how strong his voice had grown since the hospital.

She shrugged.

"You've got your son," she said softly, looking down at her hands as they twisted on her butterbeer bottle anxiously. "You've got your friends and family. What do you need me for? You're healed."

"No," he said huskily, realizing that he was imagining her hands doing something entirely different. "No, I'm not really healed."

She frowned, obviously not understanding, and she opened her mouth to ask what he was talking about, but Remus spoke over her unspoken words, not wanting to let her talk him out of what he knew implicitly that he needed to say.

"I'm very broken inside, you see," he said softly, gazing into her beautiful eyes, her beautiful, innocent eyes. "And the only thing that seems to make it feel any better is being around you, being around your radiant smile. I think I'd waste away without it, without you."

"I think you give me too much credit," Katie said, a tad more breathlessly than before, but Remus knew he had to show her, and to make her see how important she was, and without putting too much thought to his instinct, he pressed his lips to hers, tasting the butterbeer on her mouth, holding in the moan that formed within him so as not to scare her off. That would be the last thing he needed.

To his surprise, she relaxed into the kiss very quickly, wrapping an arm around his neck, resting her other cool hand on his chest gently. The kiss began to grow and build rapidly once she responded, their lips interlocking, their tongues peeking out, hesitantly at first, then eagerly, passionately, to explore each other deeper.

When they finally had to pull apart, Katie looked up at him with such a flushed, eager, innocent face, like a beautiful little angel all his own, and her smile was so sweet and radiant, that Remus felt all sense of propriety and logic in him melt away and he knew all he wanted was to have her, to possess her, to hold her tightly against him. And she didn't protest when he pulled her out of her seat, led her to the front, asked for and paid for a room, so she must have felt something similar.

It was a blur, going up the stairs to the room Rosmerta put them in for the night (for even though they were only intending to use it for the day it was a full night they had to pay for), Katie's hand in his, her perfect and gentle little fingers fitting in what he saw as a gnarled hand, as though it were made to fit there.

Once inside the room, her lips were on his so fast that he didn't even had time to properly close the door before his mind was clouded with desire, lust, a need to feel and taste every part of her.

She must have closed the door sometime in that first kiss, because when she pulled away and began unbuttoning the shirt Harry and Andromeda had picked Remus noted that the door was properly closed.

The thought was promptly put out of his mind as she pushed the shirt that had been so carefully selected off his shoulders and tossed it off to the side: unimportant.

Thoughts in general were slowly becoming unsophisticated, increasingly primitive as he undid the fastenings on the back of her pretty dress and she let it fall to the floor, unveiling the vast majority of her flawless body to him.

No, not completely flawless, he recalled, glancing at the fingertip of her left hand, where there was a tiny scar just visible to one who knew it was there: the place she'd touched the cursed necklace in her seventh year at Hogwarts.

Remus wanted to rip Draco Malfoy into pieces for marring such a perfect specimen with his carelessness, his desperation.

Before that thought had a chance to full develop, Katie's sweet little fingers were unfastening his trousers, pulling off the rest of his clothes in one swift motion, and blushing slightly at her own action.

She looked at his semi-erectness and bit her lip slightly, which Remus took as a sign of encouragement, leading her over to the bed as he kicked aside the remainders of his clothing, eager to remove the remainders of hers.

It was clear from the way her hands were shaking that she was nowhere near as experienced as Remus was, but she was quite a bit younger.

He carefully removed her red satin bra, not as easily as some men might have, but well enough with the practice he'd gotten with his wife. Remus took a moment to marvel at how fittingly perfect Katie's breasts were before peeling off her panties, the red lace panties, and enjoying the scent of her arousal, so close... close enough to taste. He was already hard with how delicious he knew she had to be with a scent like that and he'd not even had a proper taste of her yet. He would remedy that soon enough.

The rest of the night (for they did end up staying the night after all) was a blur of sensations and sounds... Her panting, his gasping, her screaming his name, his tasting every part of her he could reach, her taking him in her mouth tentatively at first, then with vigor and confidence. The way her perfect body looked riding him, the way she felt as they collapsed together in the sweat-soaked sheets, the feel of her lips resting on his as they fell asleep tangled up in each other...

Remus woke the following morning noting before he opened his eyes that his location smelt strongly of sex and female... a wonderful, attractive female he adored. His arms were wrapped around her naked body, he realized, and she stirred a little in her sleep, cuddling closer to him, her head resting against both the pillow and his shoulder, her warm breath on his scarred chest, making his heart beat faster.

Katie. Katie Bell was in his arms. She had stayed. He had stayed. After everything they'd done in the heat and passion of the... well, _moment_, he supposed, but it was a very, very long string of moments... She'd stayed. She hadn't left out of horror and shame.

Just to make sure he wasn't still somehow dreaming, Remus opened his eyes and looked down at her face to find her beautiful eyes looking up at him innocently, her radiant smile growing with each moment they watched each other. His heart began to race as he realized that it was real, that they were really lying in bed after a full night of making love, that she still seemed to want him somehow from the way she pressed her smiling lips to his collarbone.

"I'm a bit sore," she said with a breathless laugh.

"I'm sorry," Remus sighed, feeling a bit guilty.

"Don't be," she said softly, still smiling against his skin. "That was the best night of my life. Can... can we do it again?"

Remus blinked, looking down at the angel in his arms, hardly believing that she could want him half as much as he wanted her.

"Anything you want, love," he whispered, kissing her sweet, tangled hair. "Anytime at all."

And they did. And they would again. That day was just the beginning of a long string of emotional healing that Remus underwent like the best, most enjoyable sort of therapy.

And suddenly Remus didn't feel like he should have died in Tonks's place. He didn't feel guilty. He just felt love.


End file.
